The United Kingdom woke up Sunday morning to city streets covered in debris and smoldering rubbish as a weekend of far-right, anti-immigration demonstrations — stoked by conspiracy theories spread on social media — erupted into violence in seven cities across the nation.
Police arrested at least 100 people, and riot police wearing helmets and holding shields came out in force as Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged to take action against “extremists.”
On Saturday, groups in Leeds waving St. George’s Cross flags, England’s national flag regularly flown by far-right groups, shouted “Muslims off our streets,” pairing it with a slur suggesting they were criminal child abusers. In the city of Hull, rioters threw bottles and smashed a window at a hotel housing asylum-seekers as demonstrators clashed with police.
What started as targeted anti-immigration demonstrations quickly descended into directionless disorder. A library in Liverpool, reopened in 2023 as an “education to employment” service for people of all abilities, was set ablaze.
"The latest demonstrations follow a week of riots in the country after three young girls were killed in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party in the town of Southport. At the center of the demonstrations was a conspiracy theory, spread on social media, based on a lie that the perpetrator was Muslim, an asylum-seeker or both.
Less than three hours after the attack on the girls, AI-generated images were shared on X by an account called Europe invasion, depicting a man in traditional Muslim dress waving a knife outside the U.K.’s houses of Parliament. The post has since been viewed over 900,000 times.
A TikTok account with no previous content that called for protests near the attack site also amassed almost 60,000 views within hours, a spokesperson for Tech Against Terrorism told The Guardian."
Wow it didn’t take long for ai to cause massive panic. Expect to see this kind of thing ramp up.
It was obviously gonna happen sooner or later, tbh I’m surprised it took this long
Imagine how bad it will be once AI figures out how to do hands properly…
Where are all the children falling over themselves to defend China’s Tiktok? Surely there is a reason why this is totally okay.